Imams at Iraqi mosques condemned the US-led offensive and urged the public to fight against the US and British forces. Iraqi Television showed Dr. Abdullatif Hameem, imam of Baghdad’s central mosque, carrying an AK-47 rifle in his hand while delivering the Friday sermon, and threatening the US forces.

Baghdad has offered attractive rewards to every Iraqi soldier who downs an enemy plane or missile or captures a US or British soldier. An Iraqi who downs a fighter plane will get a reward of 100 million dinars, while the capture of an enemy soldier will net 50 million dinars.

Several road accidents were reported in Baghdad and the surrounding cities. In one incident, a car carrying an eight-member family overturned following an explosion, killing the whole family who were fleeing the bombing.

US forces fired about 320 missiles at Baghdad and surrounding areas, a senior US naval commander said. But Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed said that “no force in the world” will conquer Iraq, at a press conference in the middle of the massive air raid. “No force in the world will conquer us because we are defending our country, our principles and our religion. We are, no doubt, the victors,” Ahmed said, his voice sporadically drowned out by violent explosions.

Top Iraqi Cabinet ministers, one of them brandishing an assault rifle, denounced the United States as a “superpower of villains” and said that US-led invaders would be incinerated in Baghdad.

“Victory is guaranteed,” Interior Minister Mahmoud Diyab Al-Ahmed told a news conference, defiantly waving a shiny Kalashnikov and standing in front of a picture of President Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi flag. He and Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf blasted George Bush and Tony Blair as criminals for launching an invasion overnight.

“They are a superpower of villains,” Sahaf said of the United States. “They are a superpower of Al Capone,” he added, referring to the 1920s Chicago gangster. He called Bush the “leader of the international criminal gang of bastards”.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the scale of the assault was intended to show Iraqis that Saddam was finished and his rule was “history”. “The regime is starting to lose control of their country,” Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon.

Iraq said Saddam had survived a US attempt to target him directly on Thursday. But rumors persisted that the Iraqi leader was dead and he was not seen in public or on television yesterday. British and US officials said they did not know whether he was alive or dead.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said hundreds of targets would be hit in the next 24 hours. He also said US and British forces would secure oil fields in southern Iraq and were accepting the surrender of several hundred Iraqi troops.

He said other Iraqi soldiers were just leaving their units and running away. Iraqi resistance so far had been sporadic.

In a day of swift developments, US Marines captured the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr while other troops seized two airfields in the Iraqi desert 140 and 180 miles (225 km and 290 km) west of the capital, part of a move to encircle Baghdad.

British Marines launched an amphibious and aerial assault and secured key oil installations at the head of the Gulf. Other British troops headed for the port of Basra.

The US 3rd Infantry Division had come under fire near Nassiriya. US troops returned fire with rockets. US officers said they expected soon “to go and join the battle.”

British commandos took the Faw Peninsula on Iraq’s southern tip, seizing oil export terminals, but Iraqi troops pinned down US Marines pushing toward the port of Umm Qasr for two hours before British artillery blasted the Iraqi defenses open.

US and British forces seized two boats off southern Iraq carrying 68 mines, military officials said. In the first day of fighting, two US Marines were confirmed killed in action. Eight British and four US soldiers died in a helicopter crash in Kuwait. It is not known how many Iraqi soldiers are dead.

Meanwhile, Turkey yesterday opened its airspace to US warplanes bound for Iraq after 24 hours of tense gamesmanship.

“It has been determined that it is in Turkey’s interests to open Turkish airspace,” Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul told reporters.